I am really excited to have been offered the role of project director of Detention Forum. The Forum is a network of over 40 groups challenging the use of immigration detention in the UK. I have had occasional involvement with …
Category: My blog
It doesn’t always start well
Working as I do on a variety of contracts around the world, it doesn’t always start well! This was certainly the case for me in a recent assignment in Serbia. I was running a workshop for Roma community group leaders …
Tagged with: campaigning
A campaigning catalyst
I am now entering my fourth year of working independently to help charities and NGOs to campaign for change around the world. One thing though that has challenged me during this time is what to call myself. The conventional description …
The campaigning passion of parents
Last month I had the opportunity of running advocacy workshops for the Open Society Foundations in Georgia and Ukraine. My aim was to support parents who wanted to advocate for changes to support children better with conditions like autism. The …
Certificate in Campaigning
Since 2007, I have had the good fortune to be asked to run a session on the Certificate in Campaigning. This superb course, now on its 20th intake, is run by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). It aims …
The challenge from lived experience
There’s a lot of talk at the moment in the UK charity sector about the importance of valuing the challenge from lived experience in both service delivery and campaigning. While people may be talking about it, there is one new …
Lived experience
I have thought a lot recently about what drives and motivates campaigns. When I look back on my campaigning, I know that it was when I had time with people who had lived experience of the campaigning issue that I …
Learning from a webinar
Having written in my last post about how you can overcome the language barrier, I faced a new challenge the other day on a webinar. I was due to run a webinar introducing a simple approach to advocacy for NGOs …
Breaking through the language barrier
I’ve written before about how campaigning and challenging injustice shows our common humanity. Across the world I have met people wanting to campaign for change. I am interested in how to break through the language barrier to support them. My …
More hope on destitution
Last month I attended a meeting hosted by Women for Refugee Women and NACCOM to explore the possibility of a new campaign to end destitution. I wasn’t too sure how I felt as I travelled to the meeting. While I …
